


Rain Our Hearts Back Home

by catstrophysics



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Thinking, Dean's perspective, Driving, Fluff, Like generally really just... gentle, M/M, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), One Shot, Piano, Rain, Sort of? - Freeform, The Impala (Supernatural), i don't know where this went, it started out as "rain" as a prompt, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 03:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20632067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catstrophysics/pseuds/catstrophysics
Summary: Dean had always loved the rain, loved it on his skin and shining in pinpricks of light in the headlights of the Impala. Castiel has left the bunker, and everything has turned to grey for Dean. Driving is time to think, and think Dean does.





	Rain Our Hearts Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> _this empty space left in the seat_   
_to my right where you should be says a lot,_   
_and today i know, that tomorrow will shine golden_   
_and rain our hearts back home._
> 
> ~ Just Say You're Not Into It— Mayday Parade

Raindrops clattered off the car roof, thousands of diamond shards falling hard onto the pavement behind the sleek, black car. Slow rock, the soft thud of a kick bass and the ringing chords of an electric guitar turned, hummed, barely tangible under the downpour. 

Dean loved the rain, loved it pouring cold and clear over the earth, loved the heady, fresh scent of the soil churned up by the barrage. 

The horizon glimmered, a watery, rose-red line at the edge of his vision, and the radio announcer, voice smooth and monotone, droned something about the hour. Driving all night had its perks, its efficiency and its contemplative nature, but to him? Driving in the dark was a drug, shooting adrenaline through his veins, coursing steel into his nerves. The night was a stimulant, forbidden and intoxicating and unholy. 

Seventy miles to home, seventy miles to atone. 

He rolled down the window, hanging one hand out in the downpour. The wind and rain stung his fingers, flagellating across them, and he smiled as a new song’s introduction played. If driving was sin, was an infernal obsession for him, then the holy water falling from the heavens burned him justly, soaked retribution into his body. 

The rain had changed when Castiel left, when he’d left late one night as thunder rattled the creaky bolts that held the bunker together and as lightning slashed wounds of fire across the grimy windows. The night the angel left, slipped out the door with a knapsack tucked under his coat to keep dry and a note pinned to the map room table with a knife. 

The storm lasted all night, stars subdued behind roiling black clouds. The last time Dean saw the only person worth living for, the last time the tan-coated man had made eye contact, the rain was just beginning to patter down. 

Yes, Dean had always loved the rain, loved the purity of it and the newness of it, loved its restoration of the world and loved its saving grace, but now he craved it. Craved the needle-sharp drops against his skin like a junkie, craved the sting of remembrance. Craved the icy, infinite blue of the angel’s eyes. He needed the rain, really, needed it like he needed oxygen in his lungs. 

Fifty miles to home, and his hand was going cold and numb. 

He pulled it back in, took his right hand off the wheel to rub feeling back in, steadying the car with his knees. The road was empty, anyways; it wouldn’t make any difference whether he was touching the wheel or not. But Sam and Castiel didn’t like it when he surrendered control of the car to fate, rolled eyes and tense posture and whispered threats, and though the regular surge of fond annoyance hit him, but it was tempered and faded out with longing. 

A song ended on the radio, a melancholy and plodding piano line fading out with the drums, and he took to thinking, watching the median sly by, eyes anywhere but the rain-slicked asphalt under him. 

Like every storm before, his thoughts turned to Castiel. 

The angel loved the rain too, he supposed, and in the Letters’ spare library, the fiction section that was really a glorified storeroom for nostalgia and long-dead memories, the one room with any musical instruments, he’d liked to sit and listen. 

It was a broom closet of a room, shelves packed tightly against three walls, peeling paint falling from the ceiling and landing in puddles of grey dust on the water-warped floor, but a piano slouched forgotten against one wall. With a brush of his fingertips and a blue spark in his eye, the piano was tuned and the age-worn wood smoothed. Celestial harmonies, the angel had commented, were never meant to be played on a harp. And say what you will about supernatural hunters’ research libraries, their music libraries deserve equal laud, Dean learned. 

Three doors deep in the hallway off the main stacks was the music collection, not so much a catalog as an avalanche of everything from photocopied sheet music to a stone tablet the size of Sam. Castiel traced gentle fingers along the inscriptions, humming softly. 

“I remember when they wrote this one,” he murmured, low words lost in the ageless, airless room. “They were so proud.” 

Together, wordlessly, they each pulled a stack of music. Dean’s tended towards the hard, the minor, the pounding chords and wailing lines, the strikingly beautiful. Castiel chose children’s songs, Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Frere Jacques, and the hauntingly beautiful melodies pulled from dusty folders straight through the centuries. 

That night a storm pounded the bunker, thudding fat drops against every side, and they holed up together on the piano bench. He was a natural, Castiel, long fingers stalking the keys and chasing flats out with quick, harsh strokes. Dean could only watch in awe, the pair of them sitting pressed against one another on the ancient seat. Like every other spare room, the insulation left a lot to be desired, and the source of the mold and rot was clear: it leaked. Dean shivered ever so slightly, praying Castiel would keep playing and not notice him, when a clap of thunder shook his senses and he bolted into the angel. Castiel toppled sideways off the bench, and Dean remembers stifling a giggle, but he doesn’t remember how his arm ended up around wide, warm shoulders, doesn’t remember how he got to be stroking up and down his arm, whispering soft words into his ear, but he was, and Castiel was leaning into his arm and reaching out a hand. 

“I don’t like thunder,” he said, eyes flicking to Dean’s face to check the response. “Sounds too much like wings manifesting.” 

And then Dean got it. 

For he so loved the rain, loved the holy water cleanliness of it and the cold clarity of a thunderstorm that could wash his whole life away that he didn’t see the other side. He didn’t see the angel tremble with every thunderclap, didn’t notice the furrowed brow that crept in with a rainy forecast, never thought twice about the nights he heard the angel cry out down the hall. 

Memories flew past the window of his car, and he flinched ever-so-slightly as the streetlights blurred into lightning strikes. 

Thirty miles to home, and his heart hung heavy and grey in his chest. 

Watching the lights whip by, watching diamond shards of rain fall to the pavement and disappear,   
Castiel was drowning, he realized, drowning in the awesome power of the universe, drowning in the purity of something he should never have had to face. The angel with the stormy-blue eyes could face thunder and never waver, hiding the terror that it was another seraph, come to rain holy fire down onto his wings. 

The music changed again, one song crossfading into the next. 

He pulled off the highway, the familiar exit towards Lebanon settling warm in his heart. He owed Castiel an apology. 

God never answered his prayers, never sent down guidance from above, and he couldn’t pray to the angel for help. Despair 

The angel ornament hanging from the rearview mirror, cheesy grin and too-white, too-soft wings winking in the dark, offered him no answers. 

Turning onto their street, between the water-laden trees on each side, and his heart pounded. 

The engine rumbled down to silence in the garage, sandwiched between the old motorcycle and a stack of file folders. 

He turned the knob of the old metal door, leaning into it with one shoulder to force the steel into action. His heartbeat echoed in his ears. A crash of thunder jolted him back into motion. 

“Hello, Dean.” 

Castiel stood, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, in the middle of the map room. His coat lay draped over a chair. Blue eyes hid apprehension well, but the salt-tang of fear still shone through. He tried a smile, piercing into Dean’s soul, and he could _feel_ the angel reading his heart, reading everything he wanted to say before he had a chance to form it into words. 

“Cas, I—” 

He cocked one eyebrow high, and Dean lapsed back into silence. Castiel reached for a short stack of papers on the table, turning it to show Dean. Piano music. “Shall we?” 

Wordlessly, together, Dean with one arm around the angel’s back, they made their way to the tiny room with the piano. 

Rain could clean the outside, he realized, could wash away dust and dirt and the aches of years, but music, _music_ could scour the soul back to shining silver. The piano bench creaked as they sat down together.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this! Please leave kudos/comments/song recommendations IN the comments, yes, I do listen to them all. 
> 
> In terms of my personal stance on rain... I'm with Dean. Let the water wash away the blood of yesterday.


End file.
